Monochrome.

Kells - A Portrait of A Community

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Kells, A quaint, picturesque village in the heart of the Kilkenny countryside. Set on the banks of the Kings river and back drop to the 12th Century Augustine priory. I spent the summer taking photos of this wonderful place so this blog has been a few months in the making, I want the photos to do the talking in this one. Fore the techies and photographers like me all images were captured using a Hasselblad 500C/M with various types of film both in date and expired.  All images viable for print on request. 

My Photography Journey so far...

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Photography is something ingrained in me, since the very first timeI shot my first photo at the age of three or four on a Minolta Maxxium 7000, I have enjoyed taking photos. It wasn't until in 2008 when on a trip to Australia and on to india did I start to get into it again. Up until then I hadn't done much in the line of taking photos as it was, (what i felt at the time) quite cumbersome with film and not really knowing what I would get, how to go about it and film wasn't cheap. With the advent of digital it all became easy, with the click of a button and suddenly you had instant gratification in the form of a picture on the LCD of the camera. 

Looking across at Mumbi, India, Taken on a Sony A300 

Looking across at Mumbi, India, Taken on a Sony A300 

Im not going to lie, I though I was the bees knees. Although looking back I was downright awful but we all do have to start from somewhere. The shot above would be one of my better shots from back them, the others I never want them to see the light of day.  For the next few year I would dabble not really paying much attention to what I was doing, until the heavy snows hit Ireland and the county looked like something out of a fairy tail. For the first time I went out with some intent to try and capture what I was envisioning . 

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Fast forward a few years to (2011)  when I was in Dublin City University studying pharmaceutical chemistry. At the end of my first year there I traded up to a canon 5DmkII from my Sony A300, Early in my second year there I started to work with another photographer out side of the university, along with covering a multitude of event for the student union. I covered events from concerts with the stripes to shave and dye to raise money for charity and everything in-between. The fire and passion for photography had well and truly been relit and burned even more intense this time.  I started testing the waters of different areas of photography and began to develop my photographic style. During the middle of that year I decided to join   the photography society there (DCU Fotosoc). 

The next year I began to teach some basic workshops and passed on what I knew to people while still leaning so much myself. 

My favourite area of photography has to be portraiture and fashion, why? Well thats simple, because it lets me tell my own stories and work with some amazing and interesting people.  One of the first shoots I did was when I went on a trip to Berlin with DCU Fotosoc,  Myself and two of my friends decided to go on a walk to the Brandenburg gate at 3 in the morning on what i can only describer as a baltic night, -3Deg C. On the way we talked and shot some street photo of the completely empty streets. The shot we took that nigh were the most memrobile shots from the trip. 

Unter Den Linden, Berlin at 3am 

Unter Den Linden, Berlin at 3am 

The portraits I shot were of my friends who were with me, I was trying out the Brenizer Method of portraiture in the first shot below, which involves taking loads of photos of your subject, stitching them all together to give a shallow depth of field. The others were all shot normally using a 50mm lens.  I found that using a 50mm lens forced me to be more creative  as it was so limiting. But it also helped me to understand how to isolate my subject making the images much more striking.

Since then I have organised a few of my own shoot around the country all of which can been seen in my blogs. But the biggest thing to happen to me so far was my trip to delft where I bough my first film camera, a humble Mamyia M645 medium format camera with a standard 80mm lens. This bring me back to the very first photo i remember taking on that old Minolta Maxxium 7000. I For anyone who has never used a film camera I urge you to try it out. After spending years leaning everything on digital, film suddenly didn't seem so daunting. I knew if I put what I had been practicing into use I should get some useable shots.  I did get some however it was a totally new learning curve, as each film behaves differently when shooting, I'm not saying it was hard to learn, it was just well... different. 

A church and clock tower in the centre of Delft. Taken with a mamyia M645, 80mm ƒ2.8 Sekor lens on Fuji Reala 100ASA

A church and clock tower in the centre of Delft. Taken with a mamyia M645, 80mm ƒ2.8 Sekor lens on Fuji Reala 100ASA

The Canals of delft. Taken with a mamyia M645, 80mm ƒ2.8 Sekor lens on Ilford Delta 100ASA

The Canals of delft. Taken with a mamyia M645, 80mm ƒ2.8 Sekor lens on Ilford Delta 100ASA

So Dabbling with film, researching different film stock and with the help of my Friend Colin (Check our his blog and photos here >> colintonge.com  ) I started to get results that I was happy with. A big decision that I recently made was to purchase a Hasselblad 500C/M, which is one of my dream cameras. 

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Since I have started to shoot film, I have found that I slow down and think about my shots much more, making each and every shot count.  There is something about shooting on film that just feels right, each shot feel more connected and more alive then anything I have ever shot on a digital camera. Now that I have the film bug I am the look out of interesting cameras, lens and films that I can use to tell more stories. 

Taken on my Hasselblad 500C/M with a Zeiss 80mm ƒ2.8T* Planer lens using Kodak Portra 100

Taken on my Hasselblad 500C/M with a Zeiss 80mm ƒ2.8T* Planer lens using Kodak Portra 100

My outlook is very different now to what it was when I first started out. I am still leaning and constantly improving what I do and what I want to show people.  This leads me on to my next chapter in my photography journey. From September I will be back in University, this time to follow my passion in photography. 

If your interested in seeing the rest of my work make sure to head over to my main site (Here) and check out the rest of my blogs of the shoots I have done. 

Bee Keeping

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Earlier this year I got my hands on a Hasselblad 500C/M medium format film camera, I decide to test it out and shoot some places and activities that happen in my local village. I started off with something very close to home, my dad; and his bee keeping and egg farming. 

Taken on Fuji Neopan 400, Carl and Cormac getting ready to go into the hives and inspect the bees, Carl lighting the smoker while Cormac takes a look at the tools and metraials for making frames. 

Taken on Fuji Neopan 400, Carl and Cormac getting ready to go into the hives and inspect the bees, Carl lighting the smoker while Cormac takes a look at the tools and metraials for making frames. 

All the different parts that go into making frames for the bees. The frames contain a foundation wax which the bees use to build honey comb.

All the different parts that go into making frames for the bees. The frames contain a foundation wax which the bees use to build honey comb.

These pictures show a small glimpse into what goes into both making parts of the hive and maintaining the bees to get a good yield of honey.  With over sixty thousand bees per hive, and not having a suit I decided to be quick and get a few shots before the real work began, and the bees became agitated.

Taken on Kodak Tri-X, Carl and Cormac talking about what they are going to do, Carl holding a nuke box with some empty frames already inside.

Taken on Kodak Tri-X, Carl and Cormac talking about what they are going to do, Carl holding a nuke box with some empty frames already inside.

Fine art - Flowers

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Sometimes beauty can be seen in the simplest of things. Here is a selection of flowers that I have shot.  All the shots below were captured using a Mamyia M645 medium format film camera.  The monochrome shots were taken on Kodak Tri-X and the colour shots on an out of date roll of Fuji Provia Slide film.  Shooting out of date film has given the film a strange washed out look, along with a strange but interesting  colour cast.

Portrait of an Artist - Paul Flynn (PtII) , A Film Shoot

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I mentioned in my last blog It was a pleasure to work with Paul in his studio for this shoot, and a little surprise in this blog, as I'm sure you have guessed for the title, these are the analog film photographs from that day. 

I think these shots capture the mood and atmosphere in Paul's studio much better then my digital shots could have. To me the shots below feel much more alive and human. For those interested I shot these on my Mamyia M645with an 80mm ƒ2.8 lens using Kodak Tri-X film.  The grain and tonality of the film was perfect for capturing Paul at work. While the lighting was low and I had to compensate this with some slow shutter speeds, this gave another human element with the motion blur of his movements. Non the less while we chatted, we both worked away, Paul painting and working on a few of his paintings and me carefully taking shots. In the few shots below Paul is working on part of his 1916 set of paintings.